China-based digital media company Bytedance has agreed to raise $3bn from investors including telecommunications group SoftBank at a $75bn valuation, Forbes reported yesterday, citing a person familiar with the matter.
Growth equity firm General Atlantic and investment firms KKR and Primavera Capital Group also took part in the round. A source told Bloomberg that SoftBank had intended to invest $1.8bn in the round, depending on whether secondary shares were available.
Bytedance’s best known property is news aggregation app Toutiao, which had 120 million daily active users as of the start of 2018, but it also runs shot-form video platform TikTok, which has more than 500 million monthly active users, and photo modification app Faceu.
The company has recently launched additional products, such as budget e-commerce platform Zhidian and social commerce app Xincao, and will put the funding toward expanding its offering and growing both domestically and internationally.
The round increased the total raised by Bytedance to more than $6.1bn and follows a $2bn round led by General Atlantic in August 2017 that valued it at $20bn.
Venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and financial services firm China Construction Bank unit CCB International co-led a $1bn series D round for the company in April 2017 that allowed Sina, a participant in its $100m series C three years earlier, to exit.
Sequoia led the series C round, which was closed at a $500m valuation, following undisclosed amounts in a 2012 series A round and 2013 series B backed by quantitative trading and technology firm Susquehanna International Group and Yuri Milner.
